


The Road Is Long (We Carry On)

by celeste9



Series: this is a bad idea (but screw it) [3]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Developing Relationship, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Hopeful Ending, M/M, Moving On, Past Leia Organa/Han Solo, Past Poe Dameron/Leia Organa, Post-Star Wars: The Last Jedi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-06
Updated: 2019-01-06
Packaged: 2019-10-05 07:24:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17320565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/celeste9/pseuds/celeste9
Summary: Leia doesn’t regret ending her arrangement with Poe, but after Crait, she finds herself longing for the comfort he offered and for the way that he made her feel. As the Resistance finds their feet on Bespin, she watches with no small measure of bittersweetness as he falls in love with Finn.What is slightly more surprising is the way she notices herself growing closer to one of her oldest friends, their host on Cloud City: Lando.





	The Road Is Long (We Carry On)

**Author's Note:**

> Set in the same universe as a couple of my other fics but all you really need to know is that Leia was having a casual, secret fling with Poe, which she ended after he didn't die on Jakku. The title is, again, from Lana Del Rey's Born To Die.

_Somewhere safe,_ Leia thinks as she sits in the cockpit of the _Millennium Falcon,_ in Han’s vacated seat. _Somewhere to lay low while we begin again._

There is only one place she thinks of.

Lando says yes.

-

The _Falcon_ is a bit overcrowded, but Leia doesn’t feel the urge to complain. Overcrowding means there are enough of them left to feel that way, and that isn’t nothing.

(She wishes there were more of them.)

It also isn’t nothing that Poe recovers Black Squadron, a bit beat-up but alive, and with new allies. Leia doesn’t know now how their new friends on Ikkrukk will help them, but it is enough to know that they are friends.

The Resistance has far too few of those as it is. All are valued, no matter what they offer.

Poe’s cheer, as a result, is more genuine than it was just after Crait. He is eternally hopeful but Leia knows how to tell when it’s forced, when he’s being optimistic because he needs to be to survive. When he smiles, it goes all the way to his eyes, and she knows that he really believes they’re going to be okay.

His attitude benefits everyone onboard.

The cramped quarters means they are all in each others’ pockets and that privacy has become a foreign concept. When Leia sits and chats with Nien or Chewbacca, Poe is playing dejarik with Finn and Rey, or laughing with Finn and his pilots, or sharing stories quietly with Finn and Rose.

The common denominator, Leia soon realizes, is Finn.

She remembers sitting with Poe in her office on D’Qar and first listening to him speak of the defecting stormtrooper who saved his life; she remembers the feeling with which he had spoken of him. She remembers, too, of finding Poe roughly hemming together the torn edges of his jacket while Finn rested in the infirmary, and the slightly uncomfortable way Poe had deflected attention away from it.

He is fond of this handsome young soldier, that much is obvious.

“If there’s anything I can do to help, General,” Finn says to her, while Poe watches on, his face filled with an emotion Leia can’t quite find the proper word for.

They all eat ration bars and Poe gives half of his to Finn, refusing to take it back when Finn protests.

They sit on the floor with their backs against the side of the ship and Finn leans into Poe; Poe rubs his thumb gently on Finn’s upper arm as though terrified Finn might move away.

Kaydel tells a story and Poe’s gaze continually lands on Finn, watching him watch her, Poe’s focus caught on Finn.

 _Enchanted,_ Leia thinks. That’s the word she’s been looking for.

Poe looks utterly enchanted every time he looks at Finn.

She watches them from across the _Millennium Falcon_ as they play dejarik, Rey beside them, and isn’t sure quite what she feels.

-

Poe is slouched in the copilot’s chair in the cockpit, talking to Chewbacca, when Leia joins them. He smiles at her and gets up, saying that he was just leaving. He brushes his hand over her shoulder when he goes and Leia can’t help her faint shiver; she wants so badly to ask him into her bed, to lose herself in the feel of his body, to let him help her forget that her husband is dead, her brother is dead, her dearest friend is dead, her son is lost, and so, so many of her trusted allies, her friends, her recruits, are gone.

Chewbacca growls a concerned question and Leia drops heavily into Poe’s vacated seat. She holds her head in her hands. “I’ve never felt so old as I do now,” she tells him.

 _A cub,_ Chewie insists, and Leia chuckles.

“He’s the cub,” she says.

Chewbacca agrees, and then makes a delicate inquiry as to their relationship.

Leia is more surprised that it took him this long than that he noticed. Chewbacca had always seen more than anyone gave him credit for. Had he been on D’Qar, Leia is certain her secret would never have been a secret to him. “Don’t think too badly of me, Chewie,” Leia says. “I was… lonely,” she admits. “I was lonely.”

 _Han was lonely, too,_ Chewie says, and Leia doesn’t know why that helps, but it does.

-

When the _Millennium Falcon_ lands in Cloud City and Lando strides out to meet them, it could be a scene from three decades ago. They had been running then, too, searching for haven, hoping to find it with Lando. It’s funny how circular life can be.

The difference between then and now, of course, is that they are all older, and Han is gone.

Leia hasn’t seen Lando in too long, hasn’t seen him since before Han… He deserved to find out in person, not over holo, but there hadn’t been time. She remembers that her voice had cracked, that the smile had died on his face.

“Leia,” he says, and kisses her hand.

“Still the same scoundrel,” she says, and likes the way it makes the lines by his eyes deepen in amusement. “Thank you for taking us in.”

“I might not be the Baron Administrator around here anymore but I’ve still got some sway, and no harm will come to you here.” He looks over the top of her head. “I thought… I thought there might be more.”

She shrugs. “This is all.” She wonders if he can tell how much it pains her.

“Leia,” he says once more, and she isn’t sure who initiates the movement but they embrace, and Leia clutches onto Lando like he is the missing piece of her that she had forgotten she needed.

After a long moment, Chewbacca gently makes his presence known from behind them, and they move apart. Leia smiles as she watches Lando and Chewie greet one another, and then it’s to business, getting her people settled in.

-

Lando has found rooms for all of them, though most are sharing. No one complains. That first night he has them all over for drinks in his suite, high up on the finest levels and with a picturesque view of Bespin.

Leia can’t help but notice the way Poe leans into Finn’s space, casually touching him, or the way that Finn smiles at him, as captivated as Poe is. She isn’t sure they even realize what they’re doing.

“Looks like his mama,” Lando says, sipping wine. “The Dameron boy.”

“Flies like her, too,” Leia says. “She’d be proud.”

“Kes shouted at you yet?”

Leia winces. “He hasn’t had the opportunity. I’m not sure if he’ll shout louder at me or at Poe.”

She isn’t sure she wouldn’t deserve it. She is the one who brought Poe into this. What would a demotion and a dressing down have been, weighed against all that’s happened to him here?

Then again, she thinks, if he had been transferred back to Hosnian Prime…

Leia has never been one to dwell on what’s past, but now, after everything, she finds herself wondering how much of this is her fault. How much of it is down to the decisions she made? Could she have done something to prevent all the lives lost, so many of them beings she recruited herself?

It’s a useless, circuitous path of thought, she knows, and her focus can only be on what’s ahead, on making the right choices now. But she does wonder.

“I miss the days when I had Mon to report to,” she says to Lando. “Ackbar, all of the senior staff.” Now there is no one but her.

“You’re the one who went and became a general,” he teases.

“I seem to recall you did that, too.”

“Yeah, and then I got the hell out. Like a sane person.”

“That’s not quite the word I’d use to describe you.” She smiles at him.

Lando smiles back, and Leia thinks of how much she missed this, missed him.

She wishes they could have all been together again, her, Han, Luke, Lando, Chewie. Just one more time.

But that, she knows, is also a useless thought.

-

Leia wants to use this time on Bespin as well-deserved rest and recovery. Force knows her people need it.

But that’s for them, not for her.

Leia uses the time to reach out to those allies who were either unavailable or unresponsive during the Resistance’s time of need. She doesn’t have the luxury to hold it against them, though if they are still with her, it will take time to regain her trust.

Some are genuinely lost to her. They are afraid, mostly, and Leia hates them for it but she understands.

But some are still willing. This is how Leia begins to rebuild.

-

Lando is more thoughtful than he likes people to notice. Leia has known this for a long time, since the Rebellion, really. She remembers how kind he was to Luke, and the way he would sit with her on Tattooine while she was frustrated and angry and missing Han.

Now he brings her food while she works, and makes jokes about not letting her starve on his watch.

“Don’t you have a droid who could do this?” Leia asks, arching an eyebrow, snatching a roll off the plate he’s just hand-delivered.

He smiles. “Of course. But then I’d miss watching you not say ‘thank you’.”

“Thank you,” she says firmly.

Lando’s smile widens. He sits on the end of her bed, leaning on his hands. “Anything I can help with?”

“You can sit there and look pretty while I work,” Leia tells him, and Lando laughs.

-

While Leia does want this to be a time of rest, there are things that need doing that she can’t do herself, and Poe, especially, doesn’t do well with long periods of rest. It only makes him antsy and restless and difficult to deal with, so Leia gives him work.

Though they have Black Squadron’s ships, X-wings are too conspicuous. When Leia sends Poe out into the galaxy, he uses an innocuous looking light freighter loaned by Lando, the sort of ship that could be flown by traders or travelers or families or any number of beings. Perfectly normal, perfectly legal. No reason to attract attention.

Poe accepts her orders with genuine gratitude that is easy to see. It makes Leia think of sending him to Jakku.

It makes her remember why she ended things.

-

On Poe’s third assignment, he is gone longer than expected. Leia isn’t worried.

Leia doesn’t worry about Poe.

Lando invites her to his room every evening and pours her drinks. He never mentions Poe.

Finn keeps asking for news. Has she heard something? When does she think Poe will return? Could something have happened? Poe will be okay, won’t he?

Leia tells him that Poe has a knack for attracting trouble, but also one for getting out of it. She tells him he’s got his back-up plan, BB-8, right there with him.

Finn seems reassured.

When Poe flies in, tired but smiling, Finn rushes to him and throws his arms around him. Poe laughs and squeezes him tight. His words are quiet but not so quiet that Leia can’t hear.

“I’m fine, buddy. Sorry I worried you.”

Leia averts her eyes, uncertain why this feels so much like a private moment. Poe has always been one for touch; his parents were like that, too.

(She remembers how much he likes to touch.)

No, Leia thinks. She knows exactly why this feels like a private moment, even if Finn and Poe might not be ready to admit it.

When Poe strides over to her, Finn moves just behind him, like he doesn’t want to let Poe out of his sight. Poe says, “Sorry I’m late, General.”

Leia tips her head and invites him to her room for his debrief.

She lets Finn come along.

-

When Leia despairs of acquiring the funds they will need, funds to build a base, or to push an old Rebellion one into working order, funds to buy weapons and ships, funds to feed everyone, Lando offers, “You know I’ve always been good at coaxing credits out of beings whose pockets could do with being a bit lighter.”

Leia looks at him. “Are we talking legally or illegally?”

Lando shrugs. “Does it really matter?”

“Perhaps not.” Leia considers. “If you were to locate some credits for our cause, I expect I could accept them without knowing where they came from.”

Grinning, Lando says, “If you don’t ask me any questions, I’ll have no reason to answer them.”

So she doesn’t, and he doesn’t.

The Resistance’s coffers grow.

-

Finn asks to accompany Poe on his next assignment, and Leia agrees. The back-up couldn’t hurt and she suspects it would be better for both her nerves and his if he were with Poe rather than stuck on Bespin.

While they are away, she allows Lando to talk her into visiting one of the fancier casinos. He acquires a dress for her, a pale, shimmery silver, and his taste is, as always, impeccable. He rests his hand on the small of her back as they walk, cape swirling around his feet, and Leia resolves to forget for an evening that she is a widow who lost her son, that she leads the rebels who are the only thing standing between the galaxy and the First Order.

“Want to smoke some folks at sabacc?” Lando asks. His palm is warm and steady on her back.

Leia lets herself smile. “Absolutely.”

As the night wears on, Leia can’t remember the last time she felt like this, a contentment that verges on the edges of actual happiness.

-

The mission goes well, and Finn and Poe return successfully and on schedule. Leia has more orders for Poe, but this time she wants Jessika Pava to accompany him, and not Finn.

Finn is about to protest; Leia can tell.

She tells him, “Lando has a ship for Rey, smaller than the _Falcon._ She’s been having dreams; it’s time she found a crystal to build her lightsaber. She wants you to go with her and I thought it was a good idea. Do you disagree?”

Wide-eyed, Finn glances to Poe, and then shakes his head. “No. No, I think it’s a great idea. I’ll go find her.” He looks at Poe again, who squeezes his shoulder.

“Go,” he says, and Finn goes. To Leia, Poe says, “I know it’s not my business, but how are you, General? Is there something I can do for you while I’m still on Cloud City?”

The words hang between them for a few moments. It hasn’t been long since a time when they both would have answered that the same way, since a time when Poe would hardly have needed to ask. Leia would have taken him into her bed, and he would have helped her.

“Thank you, Poe,” Leia says. “No. I’d rather you had a sleep and a shower, in whatever order you prefer.”

His smile is more nervous than it usually is, and she knows he’s thinking the same thing she is. When he leaves, he is careful not to brush against her.

Leia almost wishes he would.

Almost.

She goes to share a drink with Lando and Chewbacca.

-

“Rey thinks there is still something of Ben in him,” Leia says to Lando, because she is tired and lonely and perhaps shouldn’t have had a glass of wine, and Lando still remembers Ben as a toddler splashing in the bath. “I thought I had finally… accepted that he’s gone. But how can I? How can I, when…” She presses her lips together.

Lando doesn’t touch her, but he sits close and his body feels like a comforting presence. “You’re his mother,” he says, and it feels different when Lando says it, though she’s said it to herself over and over and over.

“He killed Han.” Her voice cracks. She would try to cover it were it anyone else but Lando.

“I know,” Lando says, and there is a redness in his eyes. “I would… I could kill him for that. But I… I can’t. Remember how he couldn’t pronounce my name? And his hands were so small, he used to wrap them around my finger. I wish I could just hate him. It’d be easier.”

Easier. It would be easier. But nothing would free Leia of the guilt, the guilt that she had done this, that she had been a bad mother, that she had made the wrong choices, that she hadn’t been what Ben needed.

She had tried. Perhaps she was destined to be a better general than mother.

But then, the Resistance hadn’t fared too well under her leadership either, had it?

She is too old for this, too old and too tired.

And yet here she is.

Lando takes her hand, rubbing his thumb across her knuckles. “Don’t be so hard on yourself,” he says, as though he knows.

His touch seems to waken something in Leia, this aching yearning in her belly. She misses Poe, she misses… Perhaps if she were younger, perhaps if Lando weren’t one of her dead husband’s best friends, perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.

She draws her hand back and stands; Lando stands with her. “Thank you for listening to me whine,” she says, and tries to play it like an easy joke.

Somehow Leia doesn’t think Lando is fooled.

“Spent enough years listening to Han complain,” he says, and there is… there is something, if Leia could only reach for it.

She leans up; Lando bends down. She kisses his cheek. “Goodnight,” she says.

“Goodnight, princess,” he echoes, and it’s gone.

-

Leia isn’t surprised when it happens.

Poe had arrived back two days before; she is with him when Lando calls her on her comlink to let her know Finn and Rey have returned. Poe’s face immediately brightens and Leia wonders if he realizes how obvious he is.

“Go on,” she says, and he quirks a smile at her.

“Thank you, General,” he says, and is out of his seat so quickly it nearly overturns.

Chewbacca enters as Poe runs out; his grumble is amused.

“Cubs,” Leia says, and shrugs.

It’s nearly lunchtime, so Leia walks with Chewbacca to this restaurant Lando introduced her to years ago, when she and Han and little Ben visited him on Bespin. They have this sweet fruit drink that Leia craves.

Their path meets up with the trek from the private landing docks they’ve been using; she stops and wavers when she spots Finn and Poe from around the corner. Rey is nowhere to be seen, most likely having escaped to give her friends some privacy. Later Leia will find her to inquire into her success.

Poe’s hand is on Finn’s shoulder, rubbing, and Finn’s hand rests at the back of Poe’s skull, threaded into his hair. They are talking, low, intent, needy, and Leia feels it coming even before they lean into each other.

Their lips meet and Leia looks away. There is no jealousy; this is what she wanted for him.

But there is an ache.

Chewbacca lays one large hand gently on her shoulder and expresses concern. Leia grips his hand and squeezes.

“Someone should be happy around here,” she says. “I hope it’ll be them.”

She hopes Poe will be happy.

-

Finn and Poe are demonstratively affectionate and clearly well into the first glow of romance. Lando throws another small party in his suite for the Resistance, and when Poe isn’t dragging Finn up to dance with him – though no one else is really dancing – he’s sitting in Finn’s lap, draped over him like a cape. They’re a little drunk, Leia thinks, but obviously supremely, exceptionally happy.

It’s hard to begrudge them a bit of demonstrativeness, even if Leia wants to roll her eyes a little.

Rey does roll her eyes, from where she sits with Rose. Even Rey, though, seems happy, smiling as she pokes fun at her friends, and Leia is glad of it. It hit her hard, what happened with Luke, and Ben. The girl deserves some fun.

Leia looks to Lando instead, who laughs with Larma and Kaydel; he’s made Larma blush, which is quite a feat. She can’t quite bring herself to go over there, though she isn’t certain why.

Chewbacca, having availed himself of Lando’s catering, offers her his plate. She shakes her head.

“Haven’t got an appetite,” she tells him, to which he fusses about her wasting away to nothing and not taking care of herself.

Before Leia can tease him about treating her like his cub, he says, _Han wouldn’t have wanted you to be lonely._

Startled, Leia’s gaze flickers to Lando again.

Chewbacca makes a very knowing sound.

“Oh, quiet,” Leia says.

_He was never truly happy when you weren’t happy._

“I know,” Leia says, and regrets… Well, regret is a silly emotion, and Leia tries not to indulge in it.

But there are perhaps things she should have done differently.

Chewbacca makes a vague and obvious excuse to leave her as Lando walks over; Leia is almost offended by his lack of subtlety. Perhaps he spent too much time with Han.

“Can I make you a drink?” Lando offers, leaning his hip against the arm of the sofa where Leia sits.

Leia looks up at him. “I’m a bit tired,” she says. “Not really in the mood for a party, I think.”

“You work too much,” he tells her. “Didn’t pick that up from me.”

Leia hums doubtfully in the back of her throat. “I suppose all that money that appeared in the Resistance’s spending and emergency accounts got there by magic, then, did it?”

Lando shrugs. “Must’ve.”

“Obviously.”

“My bedroom’s quieter, if you just want a moment alone. You don’t have to leave.”

“Lando,” Leia tuts. “That’s all you’ve got to get me in your bed? I expected better.”

He laughs, and Leia loves the sound of it. “Not my best work. You’ve seen me more charming when I’m in the middle of a fight.”

“Perhaps we’ve known each other too long for charm. I don’t warrant effort.”

“You always warrant effort,” Lando says, and if Leia were a different sort of person, and perhaps a few decades younger, she might have blushed.

“There’s the charm I expected,” she says, and stands. “I accept your invitation.”

“Into my bed or just the bedroom?” Lando teases, but there’s something in his tone that makes Leia wonder whether he actually would like that answer.

“Don’t rush me,” she says, but she brushes his elbow with her fingertips as they walk and thinks she might… she might…

Maybe she can be happy, too. It’s been so long she has nearly forgotten to want it for herself.

Lando sets the lights in his bedroom to dim, and they stand in front of his large, floor to ceiling window and look out at the city in the clouds. It has always been beautiful here; Leia thought so even when she was on the run from the Empire, so very long ago.

“Do you remember what you said to me,” Leia says, pressing her fingertips to the glass, “when Han brought me here? When we met?”

She can hear the way Lando is smiling from his tone. “Of course. It was a pretty good line. Still true.”

“It was obvious.”

“You wound me, Leia. You were charmed.”

“I saw right through you.”

“Well,” Lando says, warm. “I think you do that with everyone. There’s no fooling you.”

That, Leia thinks, is regrettably not true. If only everyone was who she thought them to be.

She turns away from the window; she likes the way the low light and the shadows play across Lando’s face. The years have aged him, of course, as they have Leia herself, giving him deep lines near his eyes and mouth, but Leia finds him as handsome as she ever did. She had seen through him, those years ago. She had known exactly what he was doing – and what he was aiming for – when he kissed her hand in front of the _Millennium Falcon,_ with Han there to see _._

But that doesn’t mean she hadn’t enjoyed the attention, just a little.

His attention now is less pointed and more genuine, and still there is Han.

But maybe, Leia thinks, there is some good in that. Poe had been everything Leia asked him to be but she could never ask him to be too much. Lando… Lando has loved Han, and Ben, and Leia, and understands even what Leia doesn’t say. What she can’t say.

She doesn’t know what she is capable of giving anymore, or of accepting, but she knows that she is tired, and lonely, and that the only one who can give her permission to be happy is herself.

Leia extends her hand and Lando takes it. When he raises it to his lips to kiss, they are both smiling.

**_End_ **


End file.
